Home surfers spend six hours online a week

Almost 90% of home internet users spend six hours or more online every week, according to a new survey.

The Point Topic survey of four thousand internet users reveals that 86.6% of casual internet users now spend six hours or more online a week when they are at home, up from 83% at the end of 2006 and just 50% at the end of 2005.

The survey reveals a growing trend towards working from home, with 53% of those asked claiming they or a family member now work at home on a daily basis, up from 47% in 2006.

Surprisingly, of those working at home three-quarters say it allows them to work less than the average working week. In fact, the majority of home-workers say they only put in between three and 20 hours a week.

Despite the increasing internet usage, safety still proves to be a major concern, with only 1.3% of all households saying they feel perfectly safe about using a computer at home. Viruses (76.3%) held the biggest fear, with theft of personal details (64.3%) and fraud (60.4%) following closely behind.

Emailing is still our favourite online activity, with 90% saying it was the application they most commonly used the internet for. Sixty percent use it mostly for visiting Ebay or other auction sites, 40% for downloading music and 16% to watch live TV or stream video.

Intriguingly, these figures are almost identical to the year before, despite an increase in broadband subscribers.